Polyphemus
by Return of Yagami Iori
Summary: A story centered around my favorite character, Bellona Fujin! It shifts between six years afte the Sorceress War to Fujin's past. Please review, and maybe I'll be inspired to write more chapters.


Polyphemus  
  
By Yagami Iori  
  
A/N: I wrote this because my second favorite FFVIII character is WAY too underappreciated. Oh, and Bellona IS her real first name. It's an official Squaresoft thing. The name Marie and all of the flashbacks I made up. Well, this IS fanfiction!  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy. Trust me. If I did, I wouldn't be poorer than an Enron stockholder. Please don't sue me! I love your company! *Bows before the might of Squaresoft lawyers*  
  
Her real name was Bellona. No one called her that anymore. She wouldn't let them. No one had called her Bellona since her mother... She didn't want to think about her mother... Tears did not suit her tough demeanor.  
  
*** 20 Years Ago ***  
  
"Ma'am, you have to get out of here!" the policeman shouted.  
  
Marie slung her bag over her shoulder, carrying in it the few things she owned that weren't lost in the fire. The village was being attacked by monsters. Something evil had lured creatures of every malignant sort. Fire streaked the sky, and bomb monsters flew through windows, destroying everything in their path.  
  
"Mommy?" her daughter whimpered. "What happened?"  
  
"Ssh, Bellona. Everything's going to be fine." She ran her fingers lightly through her three-year-old daughter's pixie-cut blonde hair. Lifting Bellona into her arms, Marie ran from the burning village, trying not to hear the screams of agony coming from her neighbors and friends. Once safely in the woods, she placed Bellona lightly to the ground with the bag of belongings, and raced back into the village. Junctioning her Guardian Force, she jumped at a T-Rexaur, hurling her bladed pinwheel at the creature. The T-Rexaur, unfazed, sliced into her arm with its sharp teeth.  
  
"Pandemona!" she cried out, throwing her arms forward. The bizarrely deformed purple creature appeared, teleporting Marie to safety. Her Tornado Zone attack barely damaged the T-Rexaur. Vanishing back to her home realm, she sadly sent Marie back into the monster clutches.  
  
"MOMMY!" Bellona screamed as her mother fell, a jagged T-Rexaur fang impaled in her chest. The creature turned to the small girl, and she quaked with fright. Under the leer of the monster, her light blonde hair went white from shock. A bomb, flying through the village, exploded into a house, sending shrapnel flying everywhere. Bellona shrieked in pain as a piece of wood embedded itself in her left eye.  
  
*** The Present ***  
  
She made her way to her quarters. It had been six years since the Sorceress War, when she had made herself an enemy to her peers at Balamb GARDEN, siding with her spellbound friend Seifer in the fight with SeeD. She brought up her left hand to her face, fidgeting with her eyepatch. They had some good times in the dormitories down the hall, her, Seifer, and Raijin. She tapped the monitor on the study panel on the desk.  
  
"BELLONA FUJIN... BALAMB GARDEN... INSTRUCTOR AND SeeD FIRST CLASS..." the monitor recited. "PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD." Fujin entered the password, 'MARIE', into the study panel.  
  
*** 20 Years Ago ***  
  
"I don't like this, Cid," she murmured. "This has Sorceress Adel's name written all over it." Edea Kramer surveyed the wreckage of what had once been the village of Xitel, nestled in the forest near her orphanage. She drew Curaga from a passing monster as her husband Cid moved with his broadsword to slice it to ribbons.  
  
Casting Float on a heavy piece of wood, she found a girl underneath. Clutching her mother's prone form, she held in her hands a pinwheel and a ring. Her hair was white as the moon in the sky above them, and her left eye was bleeding, the red viscous fluid dripping down her face. "Wait. Dead bodies don't bleed... Cid! I've got a live one! A little girl!" She thrust forward her Wizer Staff, and cast Curaga on the prone girl.  
  
*** 19 Years Ago ***  
  
"She'll never see out of that eye again," the young woman whispered, having taken Edea aside for a brief conversation.  
  
"But... Dr. Kadowaki!" Edea protested.  
  
"Akane," Dr. Kadowaki corrected. "I'm truly sorry, Edea. There's nothing I can do. Have you gotten her to speak to you yet? It's been almost a year."  
  
Edea simply gave a sad, eloquent shake of her head. "I can't understand why she won't talk to me. We don't even know her first name. We call her Fujin. That's the surname we found in her mother's handbag. Her mother's name was Marie."  
  
*** The Present ***  
  
"Bellona Fujin, please report to the Headmaster's office." The voice over the PA system was harsh and cold, and Fujin knew it to be the once- bubbly Rinoa Heartilly. After the headmaster had left her for one of the instructors, she had grown reserved and isolated, much like the headmaster himself had been before he left her. Their role reversal was a common inside joke among the staff.  
  
Of course, it didn't make Rinoa feel any better that the instructor Squall had left her for was not the magic instructor, Selphie Tilmitt, or the GF instructor, Quistis Trepe. Instead, it was the firearms instructor, Irvine Kinneas. Who was most certainly not a woman.  
  
*** 18 Years Ago ***  
  
"Hey Fuu!" Seifer called. "Come play with me and Quisty!" Bellona stared with her good eye at the two other orphans, calling for her to join them on the beach behind Matron's house. She smiled, and walked over to them.  
  
As Bellona joined in their game, Edea cried while watching from the window. Cid held her, trying to comfort her. "Now, now, Edea. We can't help her here. She needs psychiatric help if she's going to come out of her state of shock."  
  
"I know, Cid. But... it breaks my heart to give up one of my children when I'm unsure of their future. Who knows what will happen to the poor girl!" Edea could not control her sobs as she contemplated whether the little girl would ever speak again.  
  
*** 15 Years Ago ***  
  
Bellona was eight years old. In Dr. Kadowaki's care, where Edea had reluctantly sent her, she had minimal progress. She now made hissing noises, as if attempting to speak, but without proper vocal cords.  
  
It was September of that year when Akane noticed improvement in her charge.  
  
"What is your name, Fujin?" Dr. Kadowaki asked. "Your given name?"  
  
"BELLONA." the girl replied.  
  
The young doctor was shocked. "Bellona? That's a very pretty name. Who gave you that name?"  
  
"MOMMY."  
  
It appeared that Bellona could now talk only in one-word sentences, and it put stress on her to say long words.  
  
*** 8 Years Ago ***  
  
Cid stared fatherly into Bellona's eyes, though one was covered by a leather patch. "You've grown into such a beautiful young woman," he told her. She was 15.  
  
"KNOW? ME?"  
  
"Yes, I know you. I took care of you for a while after your mother died. I'm so happy to see that you've recovered from your shock. You're going to be a great SeeD."  
  
He walked her into her new home. Balamb GARDEN.  
  
*** The Present ***  
  
Fujin left Squall's office with the new syllabus for the projectile combat class, her specialty. She stepped up to the front of the class, and adressed her students.  
  
"Today... on... our first... day of... class... we... learn... my specialty. The... zan... or... bladed... pinwheel." She still spoke with some difficulty due to not only her traumatization, but vocal cord damage from smoke inhalation during the destruction of Xitel Village. Dr. Kadowaki discovered the damage to her larynx after she had been at GARDEN for two months, where Kadowaki was given better equipment to monitor Fujin's progress.  
  
As the students looked up at her, she pulled the pinwheel from its holster at her side and hurled it across the room. With pinpoint accuracy, it dodged every student by a hair and embedded itself in the back wall.  
  
"Sugoi!" one of the girls in front, a member of the Quistis Trepe fan club, squealed. The other students murmured their appreciation for the unexpected strength shown by the slim young instructor. When one of the students laughed at her speech impediment, she just smiled, and whispered, "RAGE."  
  
~OWARI~  
  
~Or To Be Continued?~  
  
A/N: Would you like me to continue this? I may go on into this post-game story, centered around Fujin, of course. What do you all think? Please review! 


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